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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Irish Brown Bread

Irish Brown Bread

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When Shannon was in Ireland during her BYU London study abroad, she
loved this dense, hearty, nutty-tasting bread.
It took her a long time to find a way to make it, and when she finally
baked some for us we loved it! So here’s her recipe. It’s perfect slathered
with butter and jam. Or, it’s a great
companion to stew, soup or breakfast.

Brown Bread is simply a whole-wheat
version of Irish Soda Bread (the Irish don’t use the term “whole-wheat”). They
usually bake with Odlum’s Extra Course Stone Ground Wholemeal flour. The wheat
germ and wheat bran mimic the coarsely ground flour, but if you have a wheat
grinder at home,you can omit the those two ingredients and simply grind your wheat on a
coarser setting.

We love it with Shannon’s addition of leftover, cooked, multi-grain
cereal.

2.Into a large mixing bowl sift the flours
and soda. Add the salt. If using, add the wheat germ, wheat bran and ground
flax. Add the brown sugar. Mix well.

3.Into a small mixing bowl add buttermilk,
yogurt, egg and melted butter. Whisk them all together. Stir in the
cooked multi-grain cereal.

4.Pour the buttermilk mixture into a well
in the middle of the dry ingredients.

5.Mix together until the flour is uniformly
wet. This is a fairly “wet” dough. Most brown, soda bread recipes
form a drier dough, which is kneaded gently until the dough forms a smooth
ball. This mixture is a little too wet for kneading.

6.Turn out the dough straight into the
baking tin.

7.Now it is time to “pat-a-cake,
pat-a-cake”. Pat the dough down into the pan using floured hands or the
back of a large floured spoon. You can use a lot of flour to create a
rustic looking loaf.

8.Score the top of the loaf with a serrated
knife. Then, sprinkle the top of the loaf with dry oatmeal if desired.

9.Bake for 45 to 55 minutes. The
bread is baked when it is tapped underneath and has a hollow sound.

Notes:

·When the bread is cooked, remove it from
the tin and swaddle it in a clean tea towel or two. This helps trap the
steam from the cooling bread, and prevents the crust from getting too
hard. Cool the wrapped loaf on a wire tray.

·Buy powdered buttermilk and mix the
amount you need whenever you bake. A lot of real buttermilk goes to waste
since only part of the carton is used in a recipe.